Other Evolutions, page 13
I laughed.
I thought it was a joke.
But even as my favourite boyfriend T-shirts migrated to his apartment the address on my health card never changed and my birth certificate and passport remained in my father’s study.
I would rather live in a hundred-year-old house with creaky floors, leaky faucets, and doors to nowhere than a soulless condo, I told him every time he pressed me to move in with him.
You’re a snob, Marnie told me.
She had long since moved to the Golden Triangle. Her home always had tarps and exposed wooden frames and I had to wear shoes indoors because I was always stepping on stray staples and nails and drill bits from the endless renovating.
I’m not a snob, I said. I’m a Glebite.
The One Who Stayed
136But because I was the deficient one, the one who stayed, the one who couldn’t leave, I was the one who was there, one smoggy spring afternoon walking arm in arm with Mama, on our way to lunch, when she stopped in front of one of the big houses on Clemow and said, Marnie, I don’t feel well.
It’s Alma, I snapped at her.
I was always so annoyed when she did this, when she called me by Marnie’s name or Marnie by my name as if we were the same by virtue of being her daughters instead of being two very, very different people, one of whom had one arm and one of whom was happy.
Then I looked at my mother.
My mother’s death was something I thought about in an abstract way before it happened. But after it became reality I couldn’t stop going over and over the details in my mind. It was something I wish I could forget but there is the brain again, that magnificent wondrous thing, and instead of protecting me and cleaving away from the pain it cleaved to it. It wanted to know exactly what happened, going over the details of that afternoon over and over again wanting to change the outcome in case it ever happened again.
But I couldn’t change what had happened.
The second I saw my mother’s face I knew immediately that something was wrong.
I told her to lie down on the fresh cool grass and she did so obediently. The lawn belonged to the Proctors, the mother of whom had led Marnie’s Brownie group. Brown Owl she was called. I had never been a Brownie but I had tagged along to a few meetings and watched her set out a ceremonial toadstool in the centre of a circle as the Brownies all listed the good deeds they had done that week. I thought of all this as I called 911, a strange thing to call 911 since most of my life I had been 137worried about accidentally calling it, about clogging the emergency line by accident. And now, here was an emergency.
My mother lay down on the lawn neatly, her hands clasped over her stomach like she was playing at being the Lady of Shalott.
That was another sign things were wrong. My mother never liked doing anything that could be viewed as improper or attention-seeking. But there she was, lying down meekly, not caring that the grass was going to stain her cream-coloured shell.
All the natural copper colour had drained from her face leaving her with an eerie ashy pallor.
I was able to remain cogent as the 911 operator asked me questions. I told her exactly what street we were on, read the number of the Proctors’ house, and privately prayed they wouldn’t come out. I had a vague horror that they would ask me questions about what Marnie was up to as my mother lay dying and we would both be too polite to do anything but say, Marnie’s doing well. She works for NRCan and is married now. And then we would struggle to think of something nice to say about Neil.
A woman in flip-flops with a lip of fat poking over the edge of her shorts came towards us, walking her dog. This blessed woman sat on the grass with us and took my mother’s pulse, gave her some water, waited with me until the paramedics came. They bundled up my mother and me and took us to the hospital and then they left us in the hallway, my mother still tucked up tight in a stretcher with me beside her. I stroked her arm gently with my finger. She was shivering in the heat and I wanted to be tender with the only bit of her flesh available to me.
There were signs everywhere warning that we were not allowed to use cellphones in that part of the hospital. I was contemplating whether or not my mother was well enough that I could leave her for a minute to let my father know where we were, when I noticed that the numbers on her blood pressure monitor were falling.
138It was so quick. A series of beeps on a monitor and then I looked up at her and something was clearly wrong.
Her eyes rolled back, no one was looking at her, and I called to the paramedics who were at the nurses’ station, casually chatting, and when they couldn’t hear my voice, strangled by my panic, I reached up my hand to tap the male on the shoulder, but I wasn’t wearing my prosthetic that day, and maybe that cost me a precious second, maybe less, but it felt like forever till I was touching the paramedic on the shoulder and saying, Excuse me, and pointing at my mother.
Things happened very quickly then.
About five medical professionals descended on her stretcher.
She was rolled into a room.
Someone began to cut open her shirt and bra, exposing her breasts to the medical staff. The skin of her breasts was paler than the rest of her, and I felt a surge of protectiveness towards them as if they were not a part of her but their own independent entities, two frightened, quivering, helpless creatures. The last thing I thought before someone pulled a curtain between us was that my mother, who was so proper, who never let me swear, my mother would have rather died than have a group of strangers see her exposed like that.
Then a social worker and an intake nurse descended on me.
While my mother died they asked me all sorts of questions. What a relief it was to be able to punctually answer her name, date of birth, and her health card number which was on the OHIP card I retrieved out of her purse with shaking hands.
They asked what they could do for me. I told them I needed to call my father and they took me to a landline at the nurses’ station where I called first my father and then Marnie.
Don’t panic, I said to each of them even as I was panicking. Don’t panic but Mom is in the hospital and you need to get here right away.
Then I was allowed back in the room to see my mother.
139She was lying on the hospital bed, flat on her back, her eyes closed. Gravity was bringing in to relief the planes of her face, the bump on her nose, the cheekbones which had become sharp with age.
She didn’t open her eyes when I walked in but when I reached down to hold her hand she clutched it back, so strong it hurt.
She looked dead.
She wasn’t.
Her eyes fluttered open briefly.
Almita, she said.
Her grip was strong.
They had brought her back to me, you see. She had flatlined, right after they took her from me; she had died, and they had brought her back.
The Child
Have you noticed, Marnie said not long after our mother’s resurrection, that the heart attack has made her rather cruel?
We were in the kitchen of our parents’ house, making a family meal the way we always did on Fridays, a sort of truncated Shabbat where we recited no prayers but turned off the lights, put our phones away, and talked by candlelight, an echo of an echo of something my father’s family might have done in the past.
I wanted to dump the carrot peels I was sweeping up on top of Marnie’s head.
Well, I said. She died.
It was true that when she came back Mama had become different. She had always told us unvarnished truths and been severe and demanding. But now her determination was single-minded.
140You need to be independent, she kept telling me. You need to go off on your own. I can’t take care of you forever.
This was how I ended up being evicted from my childhood home. At my mother’s behest my father persuaded one of his clients, who owned a low-rise a few blocks away from our house and rented at dirt-cheap prices, to rent to me for a subsoil-cheap price.
I lived on the third floor of that rickety building. The floors slanted and there was no central air conditioning or in-suite laundry, causing me to return home every time I needed to wash my clothes. Every evening of that hot sticky summer after my mother died and came back I opened my windows and listened to my landlady and her adult daughter screaming vile things at each other, the kind of things no one should ever say to someone they loved but which only ever seemed to be said to people by people they loved, fuelled by a kind of anger only a loved one can provoke. I listened and understood why the rent was so cheap and thought of my mother and wished I could walk the few blocks back home, past the brick school and Patterson Creek till I was at our home in Linden Terrace where I could scream vile things at her till she let me come back to her.
But even though I hated the way she pushed me away I understood it. I imagined dying had a way of reordering a person’s universe. I just wished she wanted to spend more time with me.
Marnie was different. With her job and her Neil and her life outside the confines of the Glebe, she didn’t understand why Mama was so sharp. She always looked taken aback when she returned home. She didn’t understand why Mama no longer took an interest in her career. She was puzzled when Mama no longer deferred to Neil when he was in the house.
Marnie, Mama said when Marnie asked her if he had done anything to offend her, he’s just such a plain man.
That evening after we had eaten Marnie tapped her glass with her knife which was not something she ever did.
141Excuse me, she said. Her voice trembled a little. I have something to say.
So say it, my mother said.
Neil fiddled with the edge of his placemat. Marnie glared at Mama.
I’m very happy—we’re very happy to say that I’m pregnant.
Oh, I thought. Marnie had never mentioned wanting kids. I had begun to think that she and Neil didn’t want them. I glanced at Marnie’s stomach which looked the same as it always did.
Papa began to cry. He was shorter than Marnie but somehow he managed to pick her up and swing her around.
Stop it, she said laughing, you’ll hurt yourself!
But he was so happy he couldn’t stop.
I’m going to be a zaide.
He clapped Neil on the back.
I was grateful for his excitement. It allowed me time to structure my face in a grimace resembling a smile and gave my mother time to slip out of the dining room into the kitchen.
Congratulations to you, I said to Neil as Marnie dropped Papa’s hand and went into the kitchen.
Have you thought of any names yet? my father said inanely to try to cover what was about to happen in the kitchen.
Aren’t you excited about being an abuelita? I could hear Marnie’s voice loud and demanding.
No, my mother said.
Neil nervously clutched his fork, the smile on his face sliding slowly downwards as he realized that whatever vision of familial joy he had imagined would not be forthcoming.
Um, Neil said. It’s a bit early for names.
As far as I could tell he came from a family that never talked about anything real and any words or actions outside of pleasantries alarmed him to the point of mutism. The way we spoke to each other terrified him.
142Mom, Marnie said, her voice rising. She only ever called Mama that when she was annoyed. That hard Canadian Mom instead of the Mexican Mama, with the emphasis on the last syllable.
Now, my father said to Neil, I’m not sure what your people do—
He was interrupted by Mama yelling from the kitchen, You’ll understand when you give birth that the only thing in this life for your children is pain.
Jesus!
We all looked at Neil.
It’s okay, my father said. You know it’s been hard for Merced. With the sickness.
With dying, I corrected.
It was too much for Neil. He stood up abruptly and my father and I looked at him expectantly waiting for him to burst into the kitchen and rescue Marnie from my mother.
Excuse me. I need some air.
And with that he scurried off.
We didn’t even wait to hear the door slam before my father and I were rushing to the kitchen, my father to berate my mother just as I rushed to defend her.
There was nothing wrong with what she had said. Life was pain. Monotony punctured by death with no respite in sight.
But Marnie took it so personally.
I didn’t know how to tell Marnie, but I didn’t particularly care for my future niece or nephew myself. The world seemed committed to suicide. Every year was warmer than the last; every season brought news of unseasonable floods and fires. It was unreasonable to have a child.
This was something I had been thinking more and more of as Constantine talked dreamily of the future. To my utter surprise, of late he had been talking about marriage. About children.
It wasn’t just that I didn’t love him. When I thought of bringing a child into this world, of being a mother, what came to mind were 143hospitals where arms were cut off and people died and were resurrected. Hadn’t I experienced enough pain in this life and any other? Why did he want me to mutilate my body only to birth a death?
I said something like this to Constantine because it was easier than telling him that the feelings he had for me weren’t ones I had for him. That despite the time we spent together I always expected that one day he would find someone real to settle down with and have his children. Someone who wasn’t me.
He began to suggest that I should talk to someone.
I love you a lot Alma, he said, but I don’t know how to fix this.
Fix what? I wanted to know. I’m fine.
But he kept persisting in his gentle Constantine way, suggesting the names of therapists, offering to role play asking the doctor for medication I told him I not only didn’t want but didn’t need.
So I cut off Constantine ignoring his phone calls and disinviting him from not-Shabbat where he and Neil had been allies of a sort. He would have hugged Marnie if he had been there. He would have followed Neil outside and tried to talk to him.
Eventually Marnie left, taking Neil with her. My father, furious for once at my mother, went to his study to angrily read.
I sprawled on the couch, waiting for my mother to find me and order me home.
You’re still here? she said when she found me.
I was watching American news. Or rather I was watching commercial breaks between American news. An ad for a drug company began to list all its potential side effects. Restless leg syndrome. Bleeding rectum. Suicide.
Mama settled beside me on the couch where I ended up leaning my head on her chest, listening to the beating of her heart.
This was something I liked to do after her death. They had slit her open and installed a pacemaker, turned her into a clockwork mother. I thought after her operation her heart would tick like the Tin Man’s but 144the pacemaker was only there as a failsafe to keep the beats steady if her heart couldn’t do it. In ten years, they told her, they would have to reopen the scar on her shoulder and do it again. And again. Every ten years or sooner if the pacemaker failed before she did.
We ended up flipping channels. Presenting Lily Mars was on.
Don’t you want to watch it? That Dorothea is your favourite.
But my mother had never understood I didn’t care for Judy Garland as a person or as an icon. I cared for her as a sixteen-year-old drugged-up child star with bound breasts and prongs to change the shape of her nose, embodying Dorothy walking around Oz with wild-eyed wonder.
Alright, Mama said, when I declined Lily Mars. She flipped back to the news. To the Americans with you.
Mexico
Shortly after Marnie announced her pregnancy, my mother announced she was going to Mexico.
I’m going to Mexico, she said one day at work. This news was somewhat startling. It had been years since she had made the trip, more since we had last gone as a family.
All About Merced Ruiz Olivares De Alt AKA Merced Ruiz Aka Merced Ruiz Alt
145My mother had moved to Canada as a young woman. She had never learned anything but a pale sort of useless English at school, the kind of stiff and formal learning of perfectly plausible-sounding prepackaged sentences that no native speaker would ever use.
Which way to the library?
I like the colour blue.
So when she arrived here she had to learn the whole language from scratch, a new colonizer’s tongue to replace the old one.
She learned how to order breakfast without a stutter and argue with parking attendants. She learned regionalisms: chesterfield and loonie and how to punctuate her statements about the weather (crazy weather, looks like snow, this heat) with eh.
Though her grammar improved over the years and she learned to fit her tongue around English phonemes (the hard c of the word accent, the subtle difference between tuh and thuh) she always kept a distinctive accent in English and eventually developed a twin one in Spanish as her words rusted with disuse.
Her life before Marnie and me always seemed hazy. And despite the evidence that she wasn’t from here she was so present in every aspect of my life that the thought of her in Mexico seemed improbable, a work of fiction.
She had been born in DF, the youngest child of a rural family who had made the migration to city life, the only girl in a family with three strong older brothers.
She had lived in a rough sort of neighbourhood and sometimes she casually dropped details of the life she had lived there which was so different from my childhood that it seemed as if she was raised on the moon. She had stood out in her neighbourhood as a girl who wore pants 146(who didn’t wear pants?); she had given a girl who had stolen her lunch a black eye (I went to a progressive school where I was given detention and a fifteen-minute lecture because I hadn’t been generous enough when sharing pens during art class). While there had always been money in our home—money for clothes, money for books, money for taxes, money for trips, money for the candy I bought at the corner store across from school, dawdling on my way home—my mother had grown up in a land of want. Sometimes when she rained loonies into my outstretched hands she would tell me that when she was a little girl and had asked for money for a Coke her mother had whipped her with her father’s belt.
